BootheNet.com

That’s what they say right? That it takes three weeks to form a habit. Well. It’s been about three weeks since I kind of fell into a new self improvement venture.

I was shopping the day before Christmas at Best Buy and saw a copy of Rocksmith for fairly cheap. Even though I honestly didn’t have all that much interest in the game. I thought it might be fun so I picked it up along with a pretty cheap electric guitar to go along with it. All of this was purely on a whim as I was trying to figure out how to spend a best buy gift card I got for buying a new TV for our bedroom.

Now I’ve played the game a few times, and yeah it’s good fun, and the videos and games can teach some techniques and practice. But for someone who had never touched ‘literally never’ a guitar in his life before playing it has been pretty hard.

That being said I’ve muddled through a little of it. However mostly I’ve been looking reading through an Alfred’s teach yourself book and working through the exercises and watching beginner lessons on YouTube. So I’m happy to report that after three weeks,,, I still suck. Really badly. However. I am still having fun with it. And I’ve definitely gotten a little better after three weeks. I know at the very least that I’m building up the required hand endurance as my finger no longer scream in pain from squishing on steel strings.

I take a little comfort in the knowledge that after three weeks of running nearly two years ago, I was only going about 1.5 miles or so. Learning something new takes time, patience, and practice.

I’ve picked up a few observations as well. There seems to be two schools of learning guitar. There is the classic learn all the notes and strings method (the Alfred’s book I’m slowly working through). There is also the learn a few chords and just string those together. Then memorize a few riffs and these are the places that you put your hands etc. rather than reading notes and playing songs directly from music.

I’m doing a little bit of both. Slowly. For now I’m still having fun with it. I’ve gotten stuck on a song in Rocksmith because it has the unfortunate side affect of not being able to look at your hands since your watching the game screen. I’m sure after a bit I’ll start to be able to feel where my hand is on the fret board, but for now I just can’t do it.

I intend to keep working through the Alfred’s book and I’ll get back to Rocksmith again soon as I get a few more basics down. I think I might actually take a beginner course being offered here in Oxford in March. It is a five week course and might give me some perspective I don’t currently have. But we’ll have to see if I’m still at it in March first.

written by Chris \\ tags: Guitar, Habit, Improvement, Rocksmith, Xbox

So, this past year, I did a lot of new things. Quite frankly, because of this, gaming wasn’t at the top of the list of things to keep focused on. I didn’t even go too a couple of conventions that I usually like to go to.

That partly affected my purging ability. As I tend to take a lot of stuff to those flea markets to cycle my collection properly. Because I missed out at BGG.con (And this weekends Atlanta Game Fest) I am not able to unload some of my stuff that is sitting on my shelf not getting played.

Anyway. So here I look back at the State of my Boardgame Collection.

Alright so let’s see, first, some historical data:
End of 2007, 270
End of 2008, 262
End of 2009, 259
End of 2010, 254

I’ve always had an arbitrary goal of trying to one day get things down to 250 as I label them. As it stands right now. I have 287.

287.

Yeah. I told you, gaming hasn’t really been my focus, and because I haven’t been playing games as much in the last year. I haven’t been cycling through them either. Another hindrance to my collection numbers is the fact that I instituted a family game night on Wednesday nights this year. We haven’t played every Wednesday night, but have for many. But because of that, I’ve held onto some family friendly type of things that I really probably wouldn’t have, as well as picked up a few new ones.

Now, I should get a little bit of a reprive. 17 of the above are actually just expansions to Age of Steam. Another 5 are expansions to Power Grid. That being said, those were mostly counted in the historical numbers above, although I did add a couple of Age of Steam expansions this year.

Another problem is I picked up a few solitaire games in the last year as well. Because our game group has been wishy washy lately. Partly due to me being unwilling to game past about 9PM or so. I thought that Solitaire games might be a fine pickup. But I find I just goof off and play iPad or something instead of playing these Solitaire games. But I want to try them before getting rid of them.

The real concern with the growing numbers is that I’ve split off onto an extra shelf as well as a short stack in my Bedroom, and a small table in our dining room. I really need to focus this year and get these back onto two or three shelves at most.

The new hobbies are killing my gaming life. I guarantee that no matter what other hobbies I pick up (I’ve decided to teach myself how to play guitar) and continue with this year (I’m still going to be running in the next year). Gaming will be a priority, either with friends or family. And the number of games I have on my shelves will go down in the coming year.

written by Chris \\ tags: Boardgames, Game Collection, Purge

Alright, As I did with boardgames played over 2011, I’ve recently been going over my running logs from the last year.

2011 was a great year for me as far as my goals. I had a good 5k PR early in the year. Ran what is a pretty fast 10k to me as well. I also ran my first half marathon and full marathon. I had a great experience for the half marathon, the marathon,,,, not so much.

I ran 1047.7 miles last year total. That comes out to 20.1 miles per week for 2011. At the beginning of the year it was usually less than that, at the end of the year, it was usually more than that.

Since my marathon, I’ve been right about 20 miles per week or so. I’d like to continue to do so, and running 1000 miles again next year seems like a doable goal. I would actually like to up to a base of about 30 miles per week for the time being.

As far as races, I’m currently wide open. I think I’ll probably do the Country Music Half Marathon again, since it’s with friends, and I’d kind of like to run a half marathon again to see what I could run it at. I suppose the Rock & Roll New Orleans Marathon would be a likely option as well, but I have to wait a bit and see what my schedule looks like this spring.

I’d like to do another full marathon to make up for all the mistakes of my last one. I’m just not sure when or what that would be. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to enter the lottery for New York this year and see if I can get in. If I do, maybe I’ll do that one. I’d like to do a ‘destination’ race at some point this year. Everything I’ve ran has been a ‘target of opportunity’ rather than something I’ve gone too. I’m not sure I want to run an opportunity marathon. I almost think it would have to be a destination race for me to take on the training again. Disney is another one that sits in the back of my mind.

I need to lose about 30 more lbs. I think that would make running a little easier and obviously faster. For the time being, I’m going to concentrate on that, and adding a little cross training for the next couple of months. All while building up to a base of around 30mi/week. Once I get to that point, I’ll check in with some races in March/April.

2012 should include at least one half marathon, and one marathon. I’m just not sure when or where those would be at this time. Also, likely that I would run neither with a time goal other than maybe besting my previous PR’s which aren’t great for either distance.

(Umm, wait. Does my half marathon split from my marathon count as a half PR?) I honestly don’t know the answer to that question.

written by Chris \\ tags: Half Marathon, Marathon, Reflections, Running

Like so many others in the boardgaming hobby, I enjoy looking back at the end of the year and seeing the games that actually made it to the table during the year, reflect upon what I wish would have made the table, and be surprised at what actually gets played in our group.

We call these lists our Five & Dimes. Those games which have gotten at least five plays or ten plays by myself during the past year.

I haven’t looked at the list yet, so I’m going to be shooting from the hip on this one.

So here we go:

DIMES

Harry’s Grand Slam Baseball.
No surprise here. I play this one at work with a lunchtime gaming friend at least once per day, usually twice a day. It’s a great little 10 minute game that does a pretty good job of feeling like baseball.

Scrabble
Also no surprises, as most of these plays are actually ‘Words with Friends’ games on the iPhone not really face to face scrabble games. I count and log all games played against humans. I don’t care what Hasbro says. They are basically the same thing. If they hadn’t screwed up their whole facebook thing, they could have been king of this territory, as it is now, a nice simple clone holds the crown.

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
It sucks that this game makes my dime list. But again it’s understandable. It has great asynchronous multiplayer on iPhone, and thus, nearly all the plays are on that platform. (I’ve only played this once in real life.) The kicker is I think this is a pretty weak game and I don’t think I’d ever play it face to face again. And surely would never buy a copy of it. The expansion does add a little bit to it, and makes the gameplay a bit more interesting though. I just started playing it though.

FIVES

Thunderstone
The bulk of these plays were from the OMGA gameday. AEG was nice enough to donate a copy for us to give away in a ‘play to win’ promotion. This game, Monkey Lab, and abandon ship got the bulk of the plays on this day. I liked all of these games, a friend ended up buying a copy of Thunderstone shortly after the gameday based on the fun we had with it, and a couple of the plays came from that. I really need to try the epic variant. I think I would enjoy the game way more with that variant as it is described.

Werewolf
I’m sure most of these plays were from Midsouthcon. I did not go to BGG.con this year, which is usually the one that puts this one on the top of the list. Which is likely why this one made it to the fives list but not the dimes list. Ultimate Werewolf box is shown as that’s actually the set I use, but the werewolf link goes back to the main game as I log my plays as that. It’s stupid that they are separated in the database, but oh well.

Poker
Well, the bulk of these plays were two or three tournaments I entered while I was in Las Vegas early in the year for a convention. Plus I tend to play this at night before bed sometimes using the Zynga app. I’ve played this way more than five times, but I often forget to log these plays. But obviously I did a couple of times.

Blokus
Most of these plays were either two player with my daughter, and a few were at the OMGA gameday teaching new people.

Unpublished Prototype
A personal game that I’ve worked on the rules for. It’s a very light game, but after a couple of initial plays I stuck it in the box with some notes and updated a few cards, but haven’t gotten around to trying those new cards again yet. No link on this one, as the game doesn’t exist in the database, and likely never will.

There you have it. That’s it. My gaming really took a bit of a hit this year. All my running and those goals I had for that this year made it difficult to play games late into the night and still be able to get up early the next morning for that 5:00 am run. Also, My group is very fluid, not managing to get the same game to the table very often, or many times in a row. There were a few games that came close, and many many that got two or three plays. But didn’t quite make the final cuts.

In a day or so I’ll take a look at the Game collection and check out the how I’m doing on my purge. (Foreshadowing, it isn’t good).

written by Chris \\ tags: Boardgames, Dimes, Fives, rant, Reflections

Running Motivation Poster from Runners World. It would have taken me longer to get to the pancakes. I’m sure I would have taken the word ‘temporal’ through some Star Trek iterations for a bit.

written by Chris \\ tags: Funny, Pictures, Running